The Tennessee Department of Mental Health has suspended all admissions at New Life Lodge, effectively shutting down the rehab facility. / GEORGE WALKER IV / THE TENNESSEAN

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HISTORY OF NEW LIFE PROBLEMS

New Life Lodge opens as a nonprofit rehabilitation facility in Burns, Tenn.

2006

New Life Lodge is purchased by CRC Health and converted into a for-profit facility.

Jan. 7, 2010

CRC executive Rebecca Gaskin is placed in charge of New Life Lodge.

May 19, 2010

Dr. Kevin Collen is fined and his medical license is placed on five years probation after he admitted battling addiction to street-level drugs.

July 16, 2010

Gaskin reports the death of a New Life Lodge patient to the Department of Mental Health. Dickson County EMS and Burns Fire Department records show a young man in the detox unit at the site stopped breathing and was rushed to Horizon Medical Center.

Aug. 31, 2010

New Life Lodge patient Lindsey Poteet sees her health deteriorate. Poteet is placed in a van to be driven 30 miles to Saint Thomas Hospital in Nashville. She stops breathing en route to the hospital and the driver calls 911.

Sept. 1, 2010

Poteet dies at age 29, leaving behind her 17-month-old daughter.

Dec. 31, 2010

The Dickson County Sheriff¹s Office reports that it responded to 178 calls for service at New Life Lodge during the preceding year.

2011

New Life Lodge hires Collen as its physician, just months after he exited a drug rehabilitation facility in Alabama.

The Tennessee Department of Mental Health has suspended all admissions at New Life Lodge, effectively shutting down the state’s largest residential drug treatment facility for four months or until an ongoing investigation is completed.

The admissions freeze by Mental Health came after its investigation revealed the facility failed to provide adequate medical care to its patients. Admissions have been suspended for 120 days pending completion of the investigation. With a capacity of 228 beds, the rehab center in Dickson County is the largest in the state.

As a result of the suspension, New Life Lodge, which is in the small town of Burns, has been forced to lay off more than 100 employees, according to a senior executive with the facility.

New Life Lodge failed to report “all critical incidents” to state regulators and did not maintain proper medical records, according to a letter sent Wednesday from Mental Health Commissioner Douglas Varney to the facility.

'Unfounded' claims

New Life Lodge Regional Administrator Randal Lea called the claims in Varney’s letter “vague and unfounded” and said the order was in serious error.

“We stand by the quality of care we provide at New Life Lodge, and when the facts are revealed this will be abundantly clear,” Lea said in a prepared statement. “The Department of Mental Health has never given us any indication of serious deficiencies or that our license was in jeopardy. They visited our facility in August, we followed up and made some changes, and as far as we knew we were in good shape.

“Nevertheless, we plan to ask the Department of Mental Health to identify their specific concerns, and we will address any legitimate issue,” he added.

Mental Health is just the latest state agency to take action against New Life, which last year had two patients die during their treatment. The Department of Children’s Services and three TennCare insurance contractors already stopped sending patients to the facility. The actions cut off some $10 million a year in government revenue for New Life, which is owned by for-profit California-based CRC Health.

According to Mental Health spokesman Grant Lawrence, 16 patients remain at the facility.

“Once admitted, TDMH’s ongoing review indicates a failure to consistently provide appropriate medical services and testing to ensure appropriate care for its service recipients,” Varney’s letter to New Life Lodge stated.

According to the letter, New Life even failed to obtain “sufficient medical information” before the admission of a patient.

Citing state law, Varney said it was within the discretion of the commissioner “to suspend enrollment in a facility pending the resolution of an investigation or if he believes that serious abuse, dereliction or deficiency in the operation of the licensed facility would occur without the suspension of enrollment.”

Former New Life Lodge patient Ginny Aldean, who stayed at the facility in 2010, said the rehab center deserved credit for trying to help Tennesseans with addiction problems. But Aldean said she was not surprised to hear of the shutdown by Mental Health.

“I think it is a good place, but there are definitely some issues that need to be addressed that I saw,” Aldean said, “especially staffing, health issues like cleanliness, razor blades in showers and sometimes unmanned nursing stations where drugs were stolen.”

Lea said the move by Mental Health would have a deep impact on New Life Lodge employees and others.

“Meanwhile, over one hundred Tennesseans have lost their jobs and Tennesseans’ access to addiction treatment has been severely limited,” Lea said.

An investigation earlier this year by The Tennessean uncovered the 2010 deaths of 29-year-old Lindsey Poteet and 20-year-old Patrick Bryant. Families of Poteet and Bryant have filed multimillion-dollar lawsuits against New Life Lodge. A Dickson County judge earlier this week rejected a request by New Life’s lawyers to throw out the Poteet case on technical grounds.

On the heels of Poteet’s death, TennCare contractor AmeriGroup severed its contract with New Life Lodge. Records showed that Poteet was transported by van to a Nashville hospital instead of by ambulance to nearby Horizon Medical Center. En route, Poteet became unresponsive and died the next day.

A separate incident involving an AmeriGroup patient wrongly being placed in the detoxification unit also came to light during the health-care provider’s investigation after Poteet’s death.

More recently, DCS officials began investigating the death of 18-year-old Savon Kinney, who died last month nine days after checking out of the facility. His family said that Kinney was diabetic and was prescribed the wrong medication while at New Life.

Charity Comage of Brownsville, Kinney’s grandmother, said she could not understand why state officials kept him at New Life even as they were investigating the facility.